About Me

Dr. Alberto Ortega is an Assistant Professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. His current work focuses on the causes and structural factors that lead to risky behaviors and explores how public policy can mitigate the adverse consequences for vulnerable and low-income populations. This research includes contributions in the areas of substance use, mental health, crime, and policing. He has published in various outlets, including the American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, Contemporary Economic Policy, Economics of Education Review, Educational Researcher, Health Economics, Journal of Economics Race and Policy, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, Review of Economics of the Household, and The Review of Black Political Economy. Various organizations, including the Russell Sage Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Resource Center for Minority Aging Research at the University of Southern California, have funded his research.

Dr. Ortega obtained his doctorate in economics from the University of Florida. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Economic Equity at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He is also a research affiliate at the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University and the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at University of Notre Dame. Dr. Ortega was also an Emerging Poverty Scholars Fellow at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Resource Center for Minority Aging Research Scientist with USC’s Minority Aging Health Economics Research Center. In 2017, he was an NSF Diversity Initiative for Tenure in Economics Fellow and an American Economic Association Summer Program Fellow and mentor. Dr. Ortega was also the chair of the communications committee for the American Society for Hispanic Economists from 2020-2023.